Wednesday May 21st and Thursday May 22nd

 On Wednesday I woke to another one of those days that everyone says you don't get in Ireland. The sun was shining, the birds singing  the lambs frolicking (actually the bit about the lambs is a lie - there were no lambs where we are staying).

Today we headed for Kildare to visit another Presentation Sisters' congregation.  There have been no complaints about the hospitality of any of the sisters, but those in Kildare really shone.  Although there were only 6 of us visiting and maybe another 8 of them I swear there was enough food for twice that many. And every time I took my eyes off my cup, they had poured me another cup of tea or made a fresh pot. 

We moved from there to the office of CEIST which is an education trust which manages all of the presentation schools as well as other catholic schools all over Ireland. This leaves the sisters free to concentrate on other things such as providing housing for those on low incomes.  The visit to CEIST also involved lunch. I think the Irish are worried about another famine so they are feeding everyone up while they can. 

After this we drove to Mt St Anne's, a retreat and conference centre at Monasterevin, just outside Kildare. One of their (now surplus to requirements) convents on 35 acres of beautiful farming land and forest is undergoing a multi million dollar refurbishment which looks fabulous. These women never cease to amaze me!

I had hoped we would have time to drop in to the National (horse) Stud but it was not to be. I did manage to get a photo of this really interesting horse sculpture just out of Kildare which seems to be the centre of the horse industry in Ireland. 

On the way home we dropped in to St Patrick’s College which is part of the National University of Ireland – the sign said NUI which I thought was the Irish way of spelling Uni :)

Today, Thursday, we spent quite a bit of time writing up the reports which are required as part of the trip, then headed back into Dublin to learn of the works of yet another Irish woman who set up schools for the children of Catholics, this time in Dublin.  George's hill Primary School which we visited on Tuesday was one of these schools.  We were also taken on to the church where the archives for the Diblin group are stored and were shown original letters written between two amazing women, one in Cork and the other in Dublin, who contributed so much to education in Ireland.  This garden was a surprising retreat in a not very attractive part of inner Dublin City.

 As we were walking around Dublin, I managed to find a few things to photograph along the way such as the Four Courts,

An interesting frieze on a building, 

And some lovely street lamps on one of the bridges over the Rivef Liffey.

Tomorrow morning I head off to the airport to fly to Edinburgh where I will be collected and driven to Pitlochry in the Scottish highlands to join a group from Tasmania for the remainder of my holiday.